Captain Geoffrey Price Bowring MC TD DL was a Victoria Rifles officer who fought at Calais and was captured as a PoW. Away from the Regiment he was a landowner who farmed at Halton Park in Lancashire.
Bowring was born in 1912, the son of Henry Illingworth and Margaret Hardcastle Bowring. He married Mary Florence Bowring. The Bowring Family is best known for the insurance business that bears their name, and grew out of the London – St Johns, Newfoundland commodities and trading empire that once had interests in oil, timber, food and many other areas stretching from Burma to North America.
He went to Cranleigh from 1918 to 1921 before going up to Oxford. He was a member of the CCF at Cranleigh and the OTC at Oxford.
He was commissioned on15 May 1935, promoted Lieutenant in 1938 and Captain the following February. He was given the MC in 1945. He was awarded a second clasp to his TD in 1975.
He went to Calais in 1940 with the Regiment in command of B Company under Ellison-Macartney and was wounded before being captured. B Company was assigned the Sangatte Road and the Beaches to defend.
He was wounded in an attempt to recross the bridge between Fort Risban and the Sangatte Road accompanied by two volunteers, Riflemen Bransgrove and Stevens to recover two Brens and some ammunition from a truck on the far side of the bridge which was blocked with debris.
He spent three months in a hospital in Le Touquet before proceeding on a forced march to Germany. He was interned as as a prisoner of war in Oflag VII C (Laufen) from July 1940 to March 1941, the punishment camp Stalag XXI D (Posen in Poland) between March and June 1941, Oflag V B (Biberach) from June to October 1941, Oflag VI B (Warburg) from October 1941 to October 1942 and Oflag VII B (Eichstatt) from October 1942 to April 1945 when he was made a forced march to Moosburg where he and his fellow PoWs were liberated by American troops and repatriated by air.
He was made High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1976.
He died in October 2001.